Thursday, September 29, 2005

UN: free local elections in Syria

The UN is reporting that the 2007 local council (municipal) elections in Syria will be free.

If this is true, it marks the first truly free elections under the Baath Party. Currently, the candidates are all chosen from the National Progressive Front (i.e. Baath Party members, and allies of the Party). But in these elections, anyone could stand.

The announcement was made by Hilal Attrash, the Minister for Local Affairs. He said that even if a northern council elected members of Kurdish parties who wanted to pursue an agenda of independence, they would not be interfered with.

Aymen Abdul Nur, the Baath party member who writes the all4Syria newsletter argues that 2007 will mark a turning point in Syrian democracy. he believes Syria has no choice but to liberalise those elections. It's needed to allow the internal 'boiling' pressure from civil society to let off some steam, and it'll satisfy some external observers, it'll also be necessary for Bashar to have a token 'liberalisation' after so many years of promises.

Abdul Nur is a Baath Party member, but is dissilussioned with much of the government - his newsletter has denounced government members by name, and his website has been taken down many times.

That is very good news now Syria has to move quickly to have an all country sencess and to regester people where they live not where they come from ,that will give real ditribution of people in the country so there will be no kurdish ,christian ,allowat areas but will be all syrians from different ethnic and religous backround in all parts of the country,laws should be passed immedietly to prevent discremination in housing and employment so syrians can live anywhere in syria no matter what originaly that area was inhabitted with,naim

I want to add one more note ,our family origenaly fro Hama ,my dad never lived in Hama after he started working ,i was born in Hims ,never lived in Hama our house in Hama does not excesd now ,i was in syria Dec/2003 i had to go to Hama to get an ID card ,that should not happen,naim,i did not get the ID card because they i needed a document which will take 2 weeks to get everybody should have a syrian social security nomber with that nomber we should be to knoe everything about them to give document immedietly like they do in the US,naim

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Written by sasa

From Damascus, Syria

From Damascus to London via Beirut. Based in and out of the central Damascene hamlet of Saroujah.
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